Rosemary, the mother of Sylvester Oromoni, the deceased
pre-teen secondary school student who was the subject of a high-profile
bullying case involving Dowen College in Lagos, is dead.
The bereaved, a family source tells TheCable, passed away in
late November after an intermittent blood pressure-related illness.
Rosemary’s passing comes a little over seven months after a
special court in Lagos ruled against the family on the matter back in April.
Sylvester Oromoni controversially died on November 30, 2021,
while still a student at Dowen College in Lekki Lagos.
His parents alleged that the boy, who was aged 12, was
bullied, beaten up, and fed a chemical substance by five of his male
colleagues.
Dowen College had dismissed the claim, stating that the late
student only sustained injuries while playing football with his friends.
The Oromoni family had countered Dowen’s claim, arguing that
their son had no pre-existing health challenges before the incident.
In January 2022, an initial autopsy declared that Oromoni
Junior died of “acute lung injury due to chemical intoxication”.
This post-mortem was discredited due to its methods and some
dissatisfactions surrounding the parties who witnessed the procedure.
The Lagos department of public prosecution (DPP) conducted a
second autopsy which ruled that Oromoni died “naturally”.
The case was under inquiry in a coroner’s court from 2022
until last April when it got a final ruling.
Among the defendants of the case are the five accused
teenage schoolboys of Dowen College.
They include Favour Benjamin, Micheal Kashamu, Edward Begue,
Ansel Temile, and Kenneth Inyang.
All five boys were cleared and released from the juvenile
home in 2022.
Several witnesses testified during the two-year pendency of
the case, including doctors, students, Dowen staff, and the principal.
The father of the deceased Sylvester Oromoni (Snr) and the
mother Rosemary also took to the witness box on several occasions.
Some of the Dowen employees involved in the case include
Celina Uduak, Valentine Igboekweze, Hammed Ayomo Bariyu, Adesanya Olusesan
Olusegun, and one Adeyemi, all of whom were initially accused of “negligent act
causing harm” in the case.
Oromoni was buried on January 27, 2024, after the bereaved
family opted to keep his corpse in the morgue as a protest gesture.
Mikhail Kadiri, the judge who presided over the coroner’s
court, resolved that Oromoni died of sepsis emanating from an infection of the
lungs and kidney caused by an ankle injury.
Kadiri attributed Oromoni’s death to “parental and medical
negligence” and exonerated the authorities of Dowen College.
The coroner’s verdict also ruled that neither bullying nor
chemical poisoning as alleged was responsible for the student’s death.
But the family and its legal representatives pro
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